Just some minor adjustments here; I had CT down as 40,895 private enrollments; I have to drop this by 895. However, the Medicaid number needs to be bumped up by about 1,552.
So far, about 40,000 Connecticut residents have enrolled in private insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act. Access Health CT CEO Kevin Counihan said that number rapidly growing...
Overall, about 76,000 residents have signed up for health insurance in Connecticut, either through private health plans, or the state's low-income Medicaid program.
Who would have thought that it would be Idaho, of all states, that would mark the first significant milestone since hitting the 2.1 million mark a around Christmas? In any event, the spokeswoman for Your Health Idaho announced that ID has shot up from just 1,730 private enrollments at the end of November to a whopping 20,000 people "in time for January 1st". Since the final January deadline for Federal exchange states was Christmas Eve, I assume this means that an additional 18,270 people enrolled from 12/01 - 12/24, increasing Idaho's total 11-fold.
Of course, most of those 18K new people will probably have to be taken out of the HHS's non-specific "1 million" enrollments which haven't been officially broken out by state, but even after doing so, the total number of private enrollments now still sits at just over the 2.2 million mark.
At the same time, since Idaho's CBO projection for 3/31/14 was only 40,000 people to begin with, this means that just like that, they've jumped up to 50% of their target.
Maryland added another 2,093 people to the private exhange rolls from 12/28 - 01/04, a 11% increase. The Medicaid situation is a bit more confusing: Actual enrollments increased from 19,578 to 26,500 (a 35% increase), but the prior week's tally had it at 43,065. It turns out that about 20,000 or so of the Medicaid applications need to be double-checked for duplicates, so they can't be counted yet, making it look like a huge drop by comparison. Sorry about that, folks.
As of Jan. 4, just over 20,350 people had enrolled in private insurance plans on the Maryland health exchange, up 2,100 from the week before, according to a weekly report by exchange officials. The pace of enrollment slowed from recent weeks.
...About 26,500 people had enrolled through the exchange in Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor, according to the latest numbers, up some 7,000 from the previous week. Tens of thousands more have been found eligible, but officials say many might be duplicate applications.
"Churning" describes the process by which an estimated nine million people move off Medicaid every year when their income increases, perhaps because of a seasonal job, and then move back when their income drops. Usually, people churning out of Medicaid have remained without health care coverage until they re-enroll again.
Now, because of the Affordable Care Act, people who leave a Medicaid managed care plan may temporarily qualify for subsidized insurance through the exchanges, but they may experience gaps in coverage or have to change health plans or doctors as they move back and forth. The director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, quoted in a Kaiser Health News article, explains the challenge:
Well, that just figures. Right after I post a screed whining about the lack of big numbers since New Year's--in which I specifically call out the DC Health Link for not releasing any data since mid-November--what happens? Whammo: Private enrollments have skyrocketed from 1,115 on Nov. 15 to 15,613, a whopping 14x increase. They also released the first Medicaid expansion figure at all, since neither the HHS nor anyone else has had a number for that since the exchanges lauched on October 1st: 4,677 people.
Amusingly, it looks like the majority of enrollments (up to 10,000 of the 12,000 small business enrollments) were from Congressional staffers who were, ironically, required to do so due to a clause insisted upon by Congressional Republicans.
The top line talking point: More than 20,000 people have secured medical coverage.
But nearly 60 percent, or 11,967, enrolled through the small business side of the exchange, which is designed for companies with fewer than 50 workers but also — via the Republican amendment and Obama administration rules — Congress.
After the massive spike in enrollments seen in mid- to late December, regular site visitors might be a bit disappointed at the relative dearth of increases since New Year's. There have actually been quite a few updates, including several impressive percentage increases, but the actual numbers involved have been relatively small compared to the massive jumps seen just a few weeks ago. In short, you're probably wondering why the total number of private enrollments which shot up to 2.1 million in late December only seems to have gone up about 80,000 more since then.
There are three reasons for this:
First, obviously there was a tremendous sense of urgency for people to enroll in time for January 1st coverage. A drop-off after Christmas has long been expected, although this has been a bit fuzzy as the actual enrollment deadline bounced around, from 12/15 to 12/23, then 12/24 (for most states), then 12/27 or 12/31 for a handful, and finally as late as 01/06/14 for Oregon.
Ironically, even though the article itself is primarily about Medicaid expansion in Nevada (from a newspaper in Georgia), I can't actually use the Medicaid numbers provided since they're fuzzy. It does, however, give slightly higher numbers for private enrollments in NV.
It also mentions 23,000 dental plans, which I'm not even covering. In other news, the spreadsheet includes minor corrections to both Colorado (private enrollment typo had it off by 10) and Minnesota (I had MN down as 26,001 based on "just over 26,000", this article specifies it as being exactly 26,011...or an increase of 10, although that also means decreasing the MN Medicaid number by 10 as well).
Another report presented later Thursday to the board overseeing Nevada's insurance exchange shows 17,946 people who shopped for private insurance through the online portal have confirmed plan selections. Of those, 10,776 have paid the premiums. About 23,000 have chosen stand-alone dental coverage.
It looks like the exchanges are starting to become more sensitive to the distinction between paid and unpaid enrollments; Delaware is the 5th state exchange to start separating these numbers out (or perhaps the media is just starting to do so based on the numbers released). In any event, depending on how you look at it, Delaware's private enrollments have gone up either 44% or 400% since the 793 enrolled as of December 12, and Medicaid enrollees have gone up 3.7x the 1,822 that it stood at as of 11/30.
Delaware officials reported Thursday that 1,145 people have enrolled in the state’s new health insurance exchange and paid their first premiums under the federal health care reform law.
The 1,145 paid enrollees are among 3,183 people who, as of Jan. 3, had chosen one of the health care plans offered on the exchange, suggesting that most of those who have chosen plans have not yet paid for coverage.
For Massachusetts Health Connector’s Board of Directors, which is meeting today, the key question is: How bad do things have to be – and for how long – before the consequence is a brutal decision?
CGI, which has been responsible for development, failed to deliver a working website. Worse than that: after three months, there is still no indication that CGI has the competency required to fix the website.
We’re seeing many types of outreach efforts to reach the uninsured. Navigators are doing their utmost (at least in states where their work is not being obstructed), and many church groups are addressing their congregations. Nevada has mounted a concerted door-to-door effort. Here are the results, as reported by Allison Bell.
Exchange managers want the canvassers to reach 450,800 people who seem likely to need individual or family health insurance. Mi Familia Vota says it made 53,052 total attempts from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31. The organization’s workers talked to people in 7,935 homes, or 18 percent of the homes in the target area, and generated 661 enrollment appointment leads. The canvassers found 8,377 households were inaccessible, and no one was home in 33,875. In 5,596, the residents already had health coverage. In 806 of the homes, residents refused to talk to the canvassers.
